[USG Flex H Series] - External Block List Adblock/uBlock origin parser

Maverick87

Hello everyone,
the feature of External Block List (EBL) is to permit to the Flex H Series to download a third party .txt files, that contains a series of hostname/http site to being blocked by the firewall as "malicious site" filtered by DNS/URL Threat filter.

So, it's possible to define a plain text file that as, for example:

• samsung.com
• *.zyx.com
• bla bla bla

And the firewall, when the list is applied, consider these hostname as ostile and blocked by the DNS/URL Threat filter.

Here an explanation on how the EBL works:

https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/22819/usg-flex-h-series-external-block-list

The problem is that: the flat file that the EBL feature would like to have is a fixed format that permit only IPs/hostnames/URLs in a single file format.

But… in the majority of cases, on internet, we found an adblock list that have another fixed format (for example an adblock list or ublock origin list have a different format to parse the txt file).

So… the only way to work with the EBL feature is to get the adblock list, parse it into the EBL format and load it into the EBL feature (remember that EBL require a valid URL in which you have the txt file — "http://<myserver>/ebllist.txt", is not possible to manually upload a file).

I've created a ZyFeed parser project into github, that parse the standardized adblock list into a plain text and put out as txt file; then I use my web server to serve it for the EBL.

Here the project:

https://github.com/M4v3r1cK87/zyfeed

But is very frustrating use a parser and an own web server to work with the EBL feature.

So… my idea is to introduce an AdBlock/uBlock origin/AdGuard parser directly into the EBL feature; also because, as explain before, those types of list are the most common used.

What do you think?

Thank you